Overview

The most immediate danger facing life on earth is probably that posed by
biological weapons and emergent disease. The Lifeboat Foundation BioShield proposal
[1],
described
by Lemelson-MIT Prize winner Ray Kurzweil and U.S. Senate majority leader
Bill Frist is our recommended response to this danger. The BioShield
proposal emphasizes the development of technologies to combat
bioweapons, such as biological viruses,
by developing broad tools to prevent their development and to
destroy them.

However, tomorrow’s biggest danger is nanoweapons and we believe it is
now time to develop a solution to this problem. Kurzweil [13] said

As the threshold for self-organizing nanotechnology approaches, we will
then need to invest specifically in the development of defensive
technologies in that area, including the creation of a technological
immune system.

There are two types of nanoweapons:

1) Self-replicating weapons (e.g., ecophages) that make copies of
themselves;
their only means of attack may be to “eat” the enemy or his resources as
they self-replicate.

2) Nonreplicating nanoweapons, similar to the tools of war today, that
are manufactured in a factory and then used in battle.

The NanoShield proposal has been designed primarily to handle
self-replicating weapons, but it will also be an excellent first line of
defense against nonreplicating weapons. Nonreplicating weapons are more
difficult to defend against, since they don’t need to spend a lot of time
and effort in replicating. They are also easier to design, since they do
not have to include instructions on how to replicate.

Background

One of the earliest-recognized and best-known dangers of molecular
nanotechnology is the risk that artificial nanotech replicators
[2]  capable
of digesting biological materials and functioning autonomously in the
natural environment  could quickly convert the entire global
ecosystem
into more copies of themselves. This is a scenario often referred to as
“grey
goo”, but more accurately termed “global ecophagy”, a term coined by
Robert A. Freitas, Jr. [3].

Such replicators,
called “ecophages”, would constitute a class of sophisticated artificial
life forms more lethal than any plague that has ever existed on this
planet. If they are ever built and released, ecophages will need to be
controlled by a sophisticated artificial immune system more powerful than
any immune system that has appeared in natural biology.
The human body has not evolved any natural immunity
against mechanical replicators. We must invent this immunity
ourselves.

The human immune system does not have to recognize dangerous invaders
the way a nanotech system would. Our immune system merely has to
recognize non-invaders and attack everything else. Another important
distinction is that biological immune cells  and the invaders that
they
must combat  will both replicate at biological speeds and energy
levels.

In contrast, a contest of exponentially growing numbers of nanotech
devices would
cook the
biosphere in
waste heat [3], especially if a large
number of novel
replicating nanodevices were released simultaneously, and if a different
type of defensive device were needed to stop each of them.

Average Earth surface temperature for January 2003. Courtesy, NASA.

The human immune system also benefits from co-evolution with its
assailants. Microbes are selected to not overwhelm it too quickly,
otherwise the victim would die and the microbes would also lose. The
greatest immunological advantage of a human immune system may be the
vast number of humans in which it is found. When microbes overwhelm it
in one human that human’s selfish genetic material can afford to simply
die, while living on in other humans. But we have only one earth, so
we cannot afford such sacrifices of a global scale.

For these reasons, we have a more difficult task than that facing nature
if we are to defend ourselves against artificial replicators. But we
also have advantages not possessed by nature. Most important
among these are the power to use design, to thoroughly analyze
nanomachines we find, and to employ macroscale phenomena in our defense.

The NanoShield Proposal

Our proposal for a NanoShield encompasses five specific recommendations,
as follows.

1. Threat Detection

To begin thinking about this problem, it is first necessary to determine the incidence of ecophagy that is likely to be detectible. This will be primarily a function of the pervasiveness of our defenses, and of the efficiency with which they can identify ecophagy, bearing in mind that ecophages may be intentionally designed to resist identification.

Pure crystals of diamond are brittle and easily fractured. The intricate molecular structure of a diamondoid nanofactory product will more closely resemble a complex composite material, not a brittle solid crystal.

Most diamondoid materials used for nanomachinery would be constructed from the atoms of 12 elements in the Periodic Table: carbon (C), silicon (Si) or germanium (Ge) in Group IV, nitrogen (N) or phosphorus (P) in Group V, oxygen (O) or sulfur (S) in Group VI, fluorine (F) or chlorine (Cl) in Group VII, boron (B) or aluminum (Al) in Group III, and, of course, hydrogen (H).

If nanorobots were withdrawing primarily carbon from the environment to
build diamond, you could in principle search for the surplus or “waste”
atoms that they discharge. For example, if an ecophage was consuming
CHON-based organic material, and removing mainly the C atoms for
incorporation into its mostly hydrocarbon-based replicas, it would
presumably be discharging the unused H, O, and N atoms into the local
environment as waste products in some form.

But trying to detect ecophages by searching for the waste atoms offers
several challenges:

If they discharge as they feed, the discharge could be hidden by
designing the ecophage to release mostly “natural” appearing effluents
 for example, with waste O, N and H atoms being released as
atmosphere-like O2, N2, H2, or
H2O.

Unless there were a lot of ecophages concentrated in a small area, the
volume of such effluent discharges would be relatively small, and any
wind could rapidly disperse the effluents, even if they could somehow
be recognized as artificial.

Ecophages could package their wastes into compressed-gas or
solid-matter pellets and then drop them into the dirt. If they were
covered with a camouflage coating, these droppings would be
undetectable.

Some ecophages might be made of nonhydrocarbon ceramics such as boron
nitride or silicon nitride, and thus would have a different effluent
signature than expected for diamond ecophages. Such devices might
not even need to consume biology during their relatively slow Build
(replicating) phase, but could consume rocks etc. instead, and then
only consume biology during their relatively fast Destroy
(nonreplicating) phase [3].

If the ecophage made a good effort to camouflage its effluents they
probably could not be detected, so a different detection method would
be needed to find the ecophage.

Extremely high resolution spectrum of the Sun showing thousands of elemental absorption lines.

Two possible techniques are spectrographic analysis and sonographic
detection. One could detect MM products
spectroscopically based on the
presence of particular types of chemical bonds. However, this could be
defeated by ecophage designers by coating them with something that looks
natural, like silica (sand) or an outer shell of some
magnesium-iron-silicate-etc. mineral that looks exactly like ordinary
dirt.

MM products could be detected
sonographically based on their existence
in the environment as multiple clusters of matter that resonate at the
same set of frequencies. However, this would have the problem that
nanorobots and their parts have very high resonant frequencies 
gigaHertz or teraHertz  because they are so small. Acoustic waves
of
these frequencies are hugely attenuated in their passage through air, or
even water, so their useful range would be very short, on the order of
microns. And it would not be wise to assume that ecophages will cluster
into nice large macroscale “tuning forks” that would make them easier to
detect  an ecophage designer would probably not require his
ecophages
to do any aggregation at all in order to replicate.

Another method is to examine chunks of material. If we assume a
possible size on the order of 10 cubic microns, detection of a
potentially dangerous nanodevice in a cubic meter of material would
require that 1017 chunks of material be examined. To perform
such an
examination for each of the 1015 cubic meters within two
meters of the
earth’s surface using “rod logic” (nanomechanical computation at the
molecular level, as proposed by K. Eric Drexler in Nanosystems) would
require roughly the Earth’s incident solar energy over a 15 minute
period for every computational operation involved in characterizing a
particle as a threat.

It would also require the practical disassembly of every object on
earth and some technique for utilizing the information acquired.
Because some defensive probes would be expected to fail in the ordinary
course of events, this technique would also fail to detect ecophagy
armed to defend themselves. Even a less thorough examination, testing a
single 10 cubic micron sample volume chosen randomly in each 10
cm3 region of space (a one-in-a-trillion sampling rate),
would be disruptive, computationally intensive, and relatively easy to
circumvent.

Another method is to use three-dimensional images of nanoparticles that
have been obtained with a microscope using newly discovered coherent
X-ray diffraction instead of focusing them [12]. This would allow for non-destructive forensic
analysis to see if it is an MM product. Shielding could frustrate this
process.

Trying to detect MM products tactilely, based on hardness, could be
frustrated by camouflage coatings and would require physical contact,
which generates a large-numbers problem.

So rather than computationally analyzing and characterizing random
chunks of matter to determine whether they are capable of
self-replication, a better solution is to continuously monitor the heat
signature of the entire global surface and possibly the subsurface
[3].
If this is combined with sophisticated pattern recognition, developing
trouble will be detected reasonably quickly. Manual inspection
nanorobots would then be sent to only those regions identified by the
thermal pattern recognition software as scoring high on the “possible
trouble” index. The atmosphere and oceans will need to be monitored as
well.

Is it possible for an ecophage to mask its infrared signature and thus
elude detection? Mechanical and chemical activities develop waste heat,
so eventually this heat must appear somewhere in the environment. One
strategy an ecophage could employ to evade detection would be to
transfer the heat from its site of activity to some distant site, where
the heat could be dispersed more widely and thus would be harder to
distinguish from background levels.

For example, a Peltier-effect cooling system (electronic refrigeration)
could transfer heat from the ecophages through an underground wiring
network to a distant distributed thermal radiator system, possibly
diluting the thermal signature by 1000:1 or more. Fluid-driven heat
pipes or a complex of fractal diamond pipes (diamond is an excellent
heat conductor) might also be effective. Another ecophagic strategy
might be to acquire the biological feedstock at a given surface site but
not process it there, transporting it instead to a distant location
where the thermal signature of chemical processing could be better
disguised  for example, in a processing facility located deep
underground.

All such approaches can be defeated if a high-resolution,
high-sensitivity global thermal map has been created, good baseline
statistics have been collected for many years for both surface and
subsurface temperatures, and they are closely and continuously monitored
using sophisticated pattern-recognition software.

There is one approach that might defeat infrared monitoring: stealth.
Summarizing a key point from Freitas’ ecophagy paper [3], Kurzweil [13]
notes:

“We can envision a more insidious possibility. In a two-phased
attack,
the nanobots take several weeks to spread throughout the biomass but
use up an insignificant portion of the carbon atoms, say one out of
every quadrillion (1015). At this extremely low
level of
concentration, the nanobots would be as stealthy as possible
[Freitas’ “Build” phase]. Then, at
an “optimal” point, the second phase would begin with the seed
nanobots expanding rapidly in place to destroy the biomass [Freitas’
“Destroy” phase]. For each
seed nanobot to multiply itself a quadrillionfold would require
only about 50 binary replications, or about 90 minutes.”

Therefore for additional safety, some random sampling of materials
should be done, in addition to simply monitoring heat signatures. Only a
thorough examination (including partial disassembly) of found objects
will suffice to determine whether they are products of molecular
manufacturing (MM) or not  although a variety of tests short of
disassembling the object in question could prove useful as well.

2. Non-Specific Immunity Defenses

Instrumentalities should be put in place that constitute a general,
nonspecific response to any perceived ecophagic threat. For example,
inspection nanorobots could be deployed to any area that is suspected
of having any sign of possible ecophagic activity.

If ecophages are detected, there could be a response from prepositioned
stores of generic defensive nanorobots manufactured by a global network
of defensive nanofactory stations that have been put in place well in
advance of the outbreak of the threat. These first-line defensive
nanorobots will have generic abilities to disable ecophages  e.g.,
sensor blinding, spray painting to ruin energy-producing solar cells,
and perhaps some capability of mechanical disassembly or physical
crushing, electric shock, e-beam irradiation, and so forth. These
defenses will buy time for the specific immunity defenses to kick
in.

3. Specific Immunity Defenses

A second set of instrumentalities that should be put in place comprise a
specific, targeted immunity response to a perceived ecophagic
threat. These defenses would be designed to attack the
particular ecophage in question. They could not be launched until the
ecophage was identified and its weaknesses determined. A regular
program of collecting and inspecting nanorobots found in the environment
via sampling from randomly selected locations would help to establish a
statistical baseline on extant nanorobot populations and would also
provide an early warning of new nanorobotic capabilities that are being
fielded.

The ability to detect and identify an object implies the ability, if
necessary, to selectively deliver energy into that object. Ultrasound in
the proper resonant frequency could deliver destructive amounts of energy
into pre-specified and molecularly precise objects. Specific surface
chemistries can be attacked via the relevant chemical reactions. Chemical
bonds can also be broken by electromagnetic quanta at the correct
frequency.

A methodology similar to that used by the human immune system is another
option. Surfaces complementary to those of undesirable environmental
contaminants, including MM devices, can be created and used to
selectively bind MM devices and isolate them. Sensors, solar cells and
other key parts of an MM device can be targeted as well. Such specific
anti-MM defenses would be launched at a detected infection, since it
is, of course, unlikely that permission would be given to carpet the
entire Earth (and its atmosphere and oceans) with them.

While molecular manufacturing systems must fight entropy to build
molecularly precise systems, countermeasures can work with entropy. In
other words, on the molecular level, as on any other, once detection has
occurred, destruction is far easier than creation and takes much less
time [3]. As a result of this, except
for ecophagic populations much
greater than the populations of countermeasure devices, the time taken
by countermeasures to eliminate ecophagic infestations will be dominated
by search time.

Search time should usually be inversely
proportional to
the concentration of targets. For this reason, an exponentially
replicating ecophage population can be stopped by a constant-sized
population of anti-ecophages, or more precisely, a constant
concentration (per volume) of anti-ecophages. This implies two things:
(a) You don’t need to respond to an ecophage outbreak instantly; and (b)
You don’t need to get into an exponential race.

As MM populations in the environment are monitored, any non-Brownian
diffusion or rapid increase in incidence should flag the attention of
authorities who might examine the relevant population data, schemata of
the threatening nanodevice, and simulations of the device’s behavior.
If they are concerned, they should authorize the release of
countermeasures stockpiled by a large and diffuse planetary grid of
nanofactories. Countermeasures need not be self-replicating, and in fact
should not be, since that would require them to be complex and
slow and in addition, would raise the possibility that they could be
preempted for use as ecophages.

Division of labor is generally efficient, and the production of
countermeasures by specialized productive systems is an example of this.
Although a grid of productive nanofactories must be created and stocked
with feedstock and energy ahead of time for countermeasure production,
specific countermeasures need not be created until replicators pose an
immediate danger, so long as the total productive capacity available for
countermeasure production is sufficiently great.

Manually constructed passive articulated bush robot model.

Countermeasures could take the form of small molecules, nanomachines, or
macroscale devices such as ultrasound generators, sorting devices, or
even bush robots with target specific branch tips. (“Bush robots” will
have an immovable base that repeatedly branches in a fractal way into
trillions of nanoscale fingers. [4])
Collectively, specific
countermeasures can be seen as the equivalent of specific immunity. It
could be innocuous, automatic, and continuous. But unlike specific
immunity in biology, ecophage countermeasures can be subject to higher
level analysis and centralized control, enabling their modification to
correct any unintended damage.

4. Emergency Defenses

A third set of instrumentalities should be put in place that constitute
broad-brush emergency responses to a larger ecophagic
threat. We cannot rule out the possibility of rare situations in which
the normal
nonspecific defenses fail, and successful specific defenses cannot be
mobilized. Examples of such a dire emergency would be the existence of
ecophagic replicators too numerous for cleanup or the recognition that
an uncharacterized ecophage or one with no known specific
countermeasures is replicating unexpectedly rapidly.

In such cases, it would be helpful if the NanoShield included emergency
defenses that would be effective against a wide range of ecophagy types.
With even broader impact than non-specific immunity responses, the use of
emergency defenses would disrupt lives and economic and ecological
systems. But the mere existence of these relevant defenses, prepared but
unused, will not cause harm.

Many of the proposed emergency responses will themselves cause additional
damage during the process of halting the ecophagic outbreak, much as a
surgeon’s scalpel damages the tissue through which it cuts during an
operation to remove a more life-threatening tumor. For this reason,
emergency responses should be considered a last resort and should be
activated only in the direst of circumstances.

In the
aftermath,
advanced molecular manufacturing and nanomedicine should allow us to
repair many forms of damage to biological organisms, including individual
human beings. Much, although perhaps not all, of the natural global
ecological infrastructure might be reconstituted if proper genetic and
statistical records have been maintained that describe the location and
design of every large object and organism.

The possible misuse of specific countermeasures or emergency defenses is
inevitably a serious concern, but one that should be almost as
manageable as the risk of misuse of nuclear weapons. We say only “almost
as manageable” because
MM
seems to favor evasion more than detection. This makes
infiltration of the defensive
systems themselves easier than it is in the case of nuclear
weapons.

Also, unlike nuclear defense monitoring systems, such as Geiger counters,
anti-ecophagy defense systems leave footprints when taking in information
from the outside world, in the form of the data stream from their
continual monitoring activities.

Some examples of emergency ecophagy defenses are:

a) Skysweepers. Air-filtering nanoscoop devices could filter the whole
Earth’s
atmosphere, thereby removing all aerovores, as first described by
Freitas [3].

Artist’s rendition of a 100 micrometer foglet.

b) Utility Fog. Massive utility fog curtains
capable of establishing filters for
the separation of the atmosphere into compartments, containing an
ecophagy
outbreak or enabling the rapid establishment of expanding sterile
bubbles (barriers within which organisms can be safe from any ecophagy
that they don’t bring in with them).

Curtains may
defend their
integrity with multiple layers, with sensors that can recognize
damage and respond with films of relatively inert substances that
cannot be modified by known
mechanochemical
reactions (at room
temperature or in general).

c) Solar Shades. Large solar shields that can be used to block the
sunlight
reaching Earth’s surface, thus denying power or reducing the power
available to solar-powered replicators. Prompt disablement or
sequestration over a short time period of ecophages rendered dormant
or lethargic may allow most terrestrial plant life to survive the
prolonged darkness unharmed.

d) Localized Heating. Localized heating increases thermal motions in
the mechanosynthetic
tools used by the ecophage to build new molecular structures, causing
onboard temperature-sensitive
mechanosynthetic
reactions to become
unreliable. This would lead to
fatal errors in the fabrication and assembly of daughter ecophages and
most probably the permanent poisoning of the onboard mechanosynthetic
tools. Localized heating may be an inevitable side effect of the use
of other specific countermeasures at high power but can also be
obtained more directly by relatively simple measures.

For example, an orbiting mirror could be used to focus concentrated
sunlight into a specific ecophagic outbreak region, with the duration
and intensity of localized temperature increases carefully controlled
to maximize damage to the ecophages and minimize damage to the
environment. Alternatively, an orbiting laser beam could be directed
onto the ecophagic outbreak site (heating the ecophages). Ideally any
temperature changes would be confined to the smallest possible area.

e) Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP). Nuclear weapon explosions are known to
create very sharp pulses of high-intensity electromagnetic radiation that
can destroy electronic equipment. EMP can also be generated by
non-nuclear systems. Ecophages with onboard nanoelectronic components,
including sensors, computers, electrical motors or generators, and power
conduits, would be seriously damaged and probably rendered entirely
inoperative, if exposed to EMP. Only ecophages with all-mechanical inner
workings or that are heavily shielded would be immune to EMP
damage.

Of
course, many microelectronic and macroelectonic devices that are not
“hardened” (shielded and otherwise protected against radiation) will be
similarly damaged and would have to be rebuilt in the aftermath, although
EMP generators could be deployed against ecophagic outbreaks in limited
areas, using directional antennas to minimize damage to electronic
devices. One important benefit of this approach is that EMP could be used
against ecophages infesting populated areas, without causing significant
biological damage to living things.

Radiation hazard symbol.

f) Radiation. Finally, high-power emitters of fairly penetrating
radiation,
possibly x-rays or electrons from
thermionic
emitters, can be used to
destroy all large molecularly structured systems within a large
volume. Radiation can be tuned to minimize interaction with organic
tissue, particularly with key tissues such as the nervous system, but
basically this proposal relies on nanomedical systems that can be
rapidly deployed to repair nanoscale damage before it brings about
larger scale and more complex forms of damage.

This proposal may work well with (b), enabling organisms to be
sterilized while they enter quarantined compartments. Other methods
of sterilization include the use of nanomachines to remove all
molecules from an organism’s body that are not pre-characterized as
“normal”. This proposal is fairly similar to a generalized version of
what human immune systems typically try to accomplish, e.g., the
removal of everything except an enumerated list of molecule types, so
the immune system might actually be enlisted to aid in the
identification of nanosystems that natural immune cells have no way to
attack. Biocompatible surfaces are likely to be well characterized in
nanomedicine, so such surfaces can probably be identified by cleanup
nanomachines unless the ecophages have masked surfaces to evade
detection.

5. New Monitoring Agencies

The Spacewatch 1.8-meter and 0.9-meter
telescopes on Kitt Peak, 45 miles southwest of Tucson,
Arizona.

Each government participating in the NanoShield should establish and fund
a new monitoring agency analogous to existing governmental agencies that
already monitor outbreaks of computer viruses  most notably the
U.S.
Department of Homeland Security’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team
(US-CERT), the world’s premier public-sector computer security
monitoring agency [5]. Other
analogous monitoring efforts include the
Tsunami Warning System [6] operated by
NOAA and the U.S. National
Weather Service, and the Spaceguard [7] telescopic monitoring effort,
which continuously searches the skies for evidence of an approaching
asteroid capable of impacting the Earth.

The proposed new nanotech monitoring agencies would be charged with
initiating the early studies and preliminary implementation of the
NanoShield. Each country’s agency should coordinate with the other
agencies and when they are ready to establish active defenses outside
their own countries, they should establish a lead body to handle
this.

The ultimate objectives of these nanotech monitoring agencies, as
originally noted by Freitas [3], would
be

Initiating a long-term research program designed to acquire the
knowledge and capability needed to counteract ecophagic replicators,
including scenario-building and threat analysis with numerical
simulations, measure/countermeasure analysis, theory and design of
global monitoring systems capable of fast detection and response, IFF
(Identification Friend or Foe) discrimination protocols, and eventually
the design of relevant nanorobotic systemic defensive capabilities and
infrastructure.

A related long-term recommendation is to initiate a global system of
Comprehensive in situ ecosphere surveillance, potentially
including
possible nanorobot activity signatures (e.g. changes in greenhouse gas
concentrations), multispectral surface imaging to detect disguised
signatures, and direct local nanorobot census sampling on land, sea, and
air, as warranted by the pace of development of new MM
capabilities.

This would lead to various practical early-stage monitoring activities
that could be implemented today, including most importantly
[3]:

Continuous comprehensive infrared surveillance of Earth’s surface by
geostationary satellites, both to monitor the current biomass inventory
and to detect (and then investigate) any rapidly-developing artificial
hotspots. This could be an extension of current or proposed
Earth-monitoring systems (e.g., NASA’s Earth Observing System [8] and
disease remote-sensing programs [9])
originally intended to understand
and predict global warming, changes in land use, and so forth 
initially using non-nanoscale technologies. Other methods of detection
are feasible and further research is required to identify and properly
evaluate the full range of alternatives.

Unstable Arms Race: Nonreplicating Nanoweapons

Molecular manufacturing also
raises the possibility of horrifically effective nonreplicating
nanoweapons. The difference in purpose between a nanotech weapon and an
ecophage is that an ecophage seeks primarily to replicate by consuming
biological matter, thus becoming a direct resource competitor to biology,
while nanotech weapons can have a far greater diversity of purposes,
including killing only specific parties.

Ecophages must
devote
significant resources to replication, whereas nanoweapons can focus
solely on destruction. This means that active nanoweapons can be far
more dangerous per gram than ecophages, and can act much more rapidly
because they need not waste time replicating.

As an example, the smallest insect is about 200 microns. This creates a
plausible size estimate for a nanotech-built antipersonnel weapon
capable of seeking and injecting toxin into unprotected humans. The
human lethal dose of
botulism toxin is about 100 nanograms, or about
1/100 the volume of the weapon. As many as 50 billion toxin-carrying
devices  theoretically enough to kill every human on earth 
could be
packed into a single suitcase.

Guns of all sizes would be far more powerful, and their bullets could be
self-guided. Aerospace hardware would be far lighter and higher
performance. Built with minimal or no metal, it would be much harder
to spot on radar. Embedded computers would allow remote activation of
any weapon, and more compact power handling would allow greatly improved
robotics.

Other possible nanoweapons (most of which have known defenses
that could be incorporated into NanoShield) include:

Arbitrarily large numbers of any robot.

Deuterium filters for separating deuterium from seawater.

Microscale isotopic separation of uranium.

Massive utility fog banks that simply contain all movement in a large
region.

Computer viruses that make other people’s nanofactories build
bombs.

Inhalable or skin-penetrating machines that travel to the nervous
system, allowing outside sources to take over inputs or
outputs.

Massive nanofactories could consume a substantial fraction of earth’s
CO2.

An important question is whether nanotech weapons  both replicating
and nonreplicating  would be stabilizing or destabilizing. Nuclear
weapons, for example, could perhaps be credited with preventing
major wars since their invention. However, nanotech weapons differ from
nuclear weapons. Nuclear stability stems from at least three factors.
The most obvious is the massive destructiveness of all-out nuclear
war.

All-out nanotech war is probably equivalent in the short term, but
nuclear weapons also have a high long-term cost of use (fallout,
contamination) that would be much lower with nanotech weapons. Nuclear
weapons cause indiscriminate destruction; nanotech weapons could be
targeted. And nuclear weapons require massive research effort and
industrial development, which can be tracked far more easily than
nanotech weapons development.

Finally, nanotech weapons can be developed much more rapidly due to
faster, cheaper prototyping. Greater uncertainty of the capabilities of
the adversary, less response time to an attack, and better targeted
destruction of an enemy’s visible resources during an attack all make
nanotech arms races less stable. Also, unless nanotech is tightly
controlled, the number of nanotech nations in the world could be much
higher than the number of nuclear nations, increasing the chance of a
regional conflict blowing up.

Bottom line: all problems that could be caused by nanotech weapons might
not be solvable by the NanoShield alone, but having the NanoShield in
place would provide an excellent first line of defense. We welcome
suggestions from the public on how to improve the NanoShield so it can
better handle nonreplicating nanoweapons.

Risks of NanoShield

The risk that the NanoShield would malfunction and accidentally destroy
property or life on this planet can be made as close to zero as desired
by increasing the reliability and redundancy of control systems. The
greater and true risk of NanoShield implementation is that it might be
purposely abused by people. For example, a NanoShield in malevolent
hands could be used to oppress individuals, groups, or entire
countries.

To minimize this risk, authority to activate the NanoShield should be
distributed among as many responsible but competing interests as is
practical, consistent with the need for potentially rapid decision making
by parties who have demonstrated by past practice that they are ready and
willing to take decisive action if the need arises.

One
good solution
might be to have the NanoShield controlled by a coalition of democracies,
perhaps NATO. Less ideal would be to vest control of the NanoShield in
the hands of a single strong democracy such as the United States or
Australia. A more dangerous outcome may occur if all democracies ignore
this vital issue and allow, by default, a dictatorship such as China, or
a small private group, or even a lone individual, to control the
NanoShield.

It is unlikely that the UN can effectively
administer the
NanoShield due to structural problems including its inability to make
rapid decisions, the veto power of non-democratic nations having
permanent seats on the Security Council, and the large number of
dictatorships represented among the UN
membership.

SecurityPreserver Proposal

Sousveillance as a situationist critique of surveillance. This
wearable device allows you to “watch the watchers”.

To further increase global security and to lessen the need for the most
dangerous elements of the NanoShield to be activated, we recommend
consideration of the Lifeboat Foundation
SecurityPreserver
proposal
[10], to be
implemented alongside the NanoShield.

The SecurityPreserver would deal with the problem that a powerful
nanoweapon
could be developed in secret that could wipe out life on the earth
before the NanoShield could deal with it.

The SecurityPreserver system would consist of multiple parallel,
globally
deployed, nanotechnology-based surveillance systems, such as “smart
dust” (micro- or nanosize networked sensors that could covertly detect
anything). In addition, “sousveillance” systems would be used. These
would enable the public to turn the tables and monitor the government
(and perhaps others) via tools like smart-dust data feeds  a
possible
checks-and-balance system for the coming nano
age.

Transparency vs. Privacy

Of course, a smart dust system could also be used to abridge long-held
Constitutionally-protected rights to privacy. Special enabling
legislation or even an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution might be
required to implement smart dust in a manner that would pass
Constitutional muster at the U.S. Supreme Court with similar need for
changes in laws of other countries. But as noted by Neil
Jacobstein, Chairman of the
Institute for
Molecular Manufacturing:
“Nanotechnology-enabled transparency and accountability will produce the
worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have
been tried from time to time.”

Is it acceptable for governments to monitor civilians with quintillions
of sensors, and for civilians to monitor their governments with
quintillions of sensors? Or is that irresponsible and dangerous? A
larger policy question is: should the NanoShield try to handle every
possible class of nanoattack, or should we attempt to stop hostile
forces from unleashing the attacks in the first place  which may
require extensive surveillance? While NanoShield appears sufficiently
robust to confront most ecophagy attacks, there is no guarantee that it
can handle all conceivable types of nanoweapons. Each attack prevented
by good surveillance is one less attack that might possibly overwhelm
the NanoShield. Thus the SecurityPreserver, if implemented, may
significantly
reduce the total number of threats that the NanoShield may be asked to
confront.

Even combining smart dust with the three-layer defensive system
proposed for NanoShield cannot provide an absolute guarantee of safety
against all possible nanotech threats, especially given the power that
personal nanofactories [11], which
could be acquired by individuals, including terrorists. But NanoShield
should provide an excellent first line of defense, and adding smart dust
would further strengthen it.

Conclusion

Any particular ecophagy or nonreplicating nanoweapon defense can
be circumvented, but the number of people proposing ecophagy defenses is
likely to exceed the number building ecophages by many orders of
magnitude. A mix of defenses should be deployed, preferably by multiple
agencies to minimize the risk of infiltration.

Some of these defenses should be announced publicly in order to allow a
hacker community to try their strength against them, as is common with
modern computer security, while other defenses should be kept secret to
avoid their circumvention. In this case, the total barrier of a
multilayer defensive system like NanoShield should be sufficient to
prevent the effective malevolent use of self-replicating nanosystems, and
should provide an excellent first line of defense against the threat of
even more potent nanoweaponry.

However, it is not necessary to implement the entire NanoShield plan to
be reasonably protected against ecophagic attacks. Even a partial
implementation would greatly increase the odds that an ecophagic or
nonreplicating nanoweapon attack would leave some survivors and would
easily be able to handle the bioweapon and pandemic problems that the
BioShield proposal [1] was developed
to handle.

The reason the NanoShield could handle bioweapons and pandemic problems
is that the NanoShield would be designed to handle a large range of
designs, from carbon-based to silicon-based to boron-based, to ecophages
with virtually no onboard intelligence, as well as those with onboard
sophisticated computers, all-mechanical inner workings or designs that
include electronic components, etc. In contrast, bioweapons and pandemics
would have a much smaller range of designs and therefore be easier for
the NanoShield to defeat.